Introduction

Many multinational companies are now more powerful than some countries. Some, like Wal-Mart and Unilever, regularly record profits that are bigger than the economies of countries where they do business.

Foreign companies can be a force for good in developing countries - bringing new jobs, technology and investment, but, all too often they abuse the rights of poor communities and workers and destroy the environment by putting profits before people.

• We are demanding that big business takes responsibility for its actions and reduces its negative impact on people living in poverty.

Who pays?
Every week in Britain, 32 million people shop in supermarkets, making UK supermarkets extremely powerful both in our lives and in the lives of the people that produce the food and clothes we buy.

Our research has shown that the way supermarkets do business with developing countries is having a devastating effect on the lives of workers in their supply chains.

Our campaign, Who Pays? highlights the cost to the poorest workers of this supermarket power and is calling on the government to put in place binding regulation to ensure supermarkets can be held accountable for its social and environmental impact overseas.

In Costa Rica, where the daily minimum wage is £4.64, banana plantation workers supplying UK supermarkets typically work 12 and sometimes 15 hour days just to make ends meet.

"If occasionally you do work only eight hours, then you don’t earn the minimum wage" – Worker on Plantation supplying Sainsburys.

photo : ©Antonio Olmos/ActionAid